About Me

Maria Mergulhao was born in 1993 in Lisbon, Portugal. At the age of 17, she moved to London where she studied Fine Art in The University for Creative Arts and in Goldsmiths University. She currently lives and works in Lisbon in her pink studio in Cascais.

Maria Mergulhao was born in 1993 in Lisbon, Portugal. At the age of 17, she moved to London where she studied Fine Art in The University for Creative Arts and in Goldsmiths University. She currently lives and works in Lisbon in her pink studio in Cascais.

The bluntness in my work is something I enjoy. The revealing of personal experiences and facts that shape my reality: self-revelation in a way, self-trauma in another. Mental and emotional states are underlined, with an aesthetic addiction of fluorescent colours, forms and fonts. These intimate facts present themselves obsessively rather than being repressed in a hole of the psyche. It is as if these works are mirrors of undigested life stuff which gets spilled out in a canvas, sculpture or installation. I work with song lyrics and my own poetry as forms of story-telling. The variety of these expressions are remains of things that happen. I like to invade everything I get my hands on with bits and pieces of me, like weeds invading the ground. These bits and pieces work like a puzzle that I construct in two ways: to physically build the artwork and to psychically figure things out. It is not like tying loose ends because some loose ends cannot be tied but it is like exploding them back to the place they came from: life. So basically I make stuff alive from ephemeral bits of information. I consider myself a confessional artist. Let’s spill it all out.

Honesty and boldness are unavoidable aspects of Maria Mergulhao’s work. She exposes human experiences, such as relational and interpersonal experiences, as love disappointments, society conventions within a roller-coaster of impressions.

Frankness dresses itself naked and walks around in a canvas, installation, or sculpture. She examines the notion of public and private and the boundary that brakes them. She seems to have an obsession for existential questions and pragmatic facts which constitute the revelation of her personal living experience spilled out in colours and text. The impact of fluorescent colours and persuasive character of the work create questions of the dynamic aspects of life as remains of different emotional states. The vulnerability and elasticity is used in narrative as source for story-telling in loose phrases coming from her poetry or song lyrics. The use of different patterns have without a doubt an aesthetical appeal. With the diverse decontextualized objects and materials, she creates as she describes ‘paintings in space’. Like weeds, there is a contamination, like a disease that spreads itself in colours and text.